No title available
❣ Chile in a Photography ❣
PR's Tumblrdome
Sweet Seals For You, Always
d e v o n
dirt enthusiast
Mike Driver
Janaina Medeiros
Xuebing Du
titsay
AnasAbdin
Cosmic Funnies
No title available
Acquired Stardust
almost home
RMH
I'd rather be in outer space 🛸
let's talk about Bridgerton tea, my ask is open
Peter Solarz
🪼
seen from Japan
seen from Singapore
seen from China
seen from Netherlands
seen from France
seen from Singapore
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Malaysia
seen from Hong Kong SAR China
seen from Greece
seen from France
seen from Türkiye
seen from Ireland
seen from Singapore
seen from Germany
seen from Singapore
seen from Australia
seen from United States
seen from France
seen from United States
@lostokyo
Shop Los Angeles + Tokyo = Los Tokyo! by LosTokyo located in LA, California. Rave reviews! Average review rating is 4.8 or higher
“On Reading: Or How I Learned to Love Books Again”
I originally envisioned this blog to be part personal musings, part audience engagement forum. We’re a small team at Los Tokyo—and introverts—so this seemed like a happy medium between attending conventions and markets regularly, and not having any kind of online presence at all. Life often has other plans, however. I thought it would be easy to get words out regularly, but the reality turned out to be quite the opposite. For a while now, I’ve had that thing which all writers fear: “writer’s block.”
Why? That’s a complicated answer—and maybe too personal. I loved reading voraciously as a child: Harry Potter, of course, but also Dune, The Dark Tower, Neuromancer, Lord of the Rings, and countless others. As I got older, I gradually (then all at once) lost both my confidence in myself as a writer and my faith in myself as a reader. But I learned a lot about what it means to be a reader and a writer by falling out of love with (and falling back in love with) these two activities over the course of ten years. Here’s what I learned:
The single most important lesson was that, to be a writer again, I first needed to become a reader again.
Why reading? That’s a simple answer: because if you don’t love reading, you’re probably not going to love writing. Hard stop. Maybe there’s some excellent writers out there who manage to be literary golden gooses without seeing how others ply their craft, but I don’t know of any off the top of my head. You learn how to write well by reading things that are written well (and some things that are not; but seeing it done right is way more important). I learned this lesson the hard way, but luckily got it reiterated to me the easy way.
I think I mostly fell out of love with reading because I let the outside world too far in. I think I fell out of love with writing because A) I depended on the approval of people who weren’t great muses, and B) I got used to only writing academically (where the reception to my writing was generally better, but my enjoyment of the process was not). Without getting too much into it, I feel depression exacerbated my departure from both. Ironically, I think it also forced me to find my way back to them. Negative feelings are a difficult thing to cope with, and if there’s one positive that came out of the post-COVID world, it’s that mental health issues are at least more recognized. I think depression exacerbated my loss of an internal muse because instead of searching for that inner voice, I sought outer validation. That in itself isn’t a bad thing necessarily—and with the right person, it can be a very, very good thing—but it does put your well-being into other people’s hands. Unfortunately, the world is not a nice place, and I did not pick wisely.
That’s great, you might be thinking, but how did these things lead you back to reading and writing, then? Here’s the short answer: when I kept tumbling further and further down, reaching a new “rock bottom” every time that was lower than what I previously thought my rock bottom was, I was forced to reassess what I was truly willing to put up with, and how to let go of the things that were outside my control. I also began taking inventory of what things were in my control, and with this mindset, I eventually found my old literary friends.
Finding them and getting reacquainted were two very different things, unfortunately. I won’t pretend it was easy. I’m embarrassed to say it, but I found it impossible to read actual books for a long time after I decided I wanted to start again. I would lose the train of thought, get distracted, and have to start all over once I reached the end of the page, or even the end of a paragraph. (Needless to say, but I’ll say it anyway, that was majorly demoralizing. How the hell did I used to enjoy this? I thought to myself constantly. It seemed so difficult to fathom that I’d even enjoyed poring over words, words, words. For hours.)
The first break came when I realized that I could pay a bit more attention when I was hearing a story rather than reading it. So I started with audiobooks (which I used to avoid for reasons that seem frivolous now) after a few false starts. Though I still found myself having to rewind every few minutes, I also found that it was easier to digest what I was hearing and it only got easier with more time. So step by step—or, rather, word by word—I learned to enjoy hearing stories again. And once I enjoyed hearing them again, slowly but surely, I learned to enjoy reading them again.
I wish I could say it was like riding a bicycle. Maybe it is for some people, but for me it felt like a long uphill slog. But, same as someone going for a leisurely stroll and someone climbing Mount Everest will both eventually cover a mile, regardless of how much effort goes into that mile, I eventually go the hang of reading again.
I’d say it took me about a year and some change to truly get back into it, but that’s being generous. To be honest, it took me a bit more than two years. But I did get there, that’s for sure. Among others, I’ve read Neuromancer, 100 Years of Solitude, The Lions of Al-Rassan, re-read Dune with newfound appreciation, and, finally, read Stephen King’s On Writing.
If you’re wondering why I waited so long to mention reading a book called On Writing and starting with an explanation of how it helped me, I’d recommend reading that book first. Truth is, being a writer starts with loving the craft, and loving the craft often comes from loving to read the works others have crafted. Beyond that and the basics (grammar, theme, backstory), Stephen King put it this way: you writing by doing it one word at a time. It’s as simple as that.
I read a lot more invaluable advice in his book On Writing (2000), and it’s not an exaggeration to say that reading this book years earlier would have probably changed the trajectory of my life. But alas, I let too much of the outside world in before I was ready. So it goes.
I think I needed to be in the right headspace to read this book, too. When I was younger, I would have let my pride keep me from really gleaning the most valuable lessons from this memoir-cum-writing-lecture. I think I needed life to humble me, and to realize my own self-worth; for that, I’m grateful. (As for the loss of my youth, well, today I’m the youngest I’ll ever be again, so might as well enjoy it while it lasts.)
What else have I written besides this post? That’s for me to know and for everyone else to (possibly) one day find out. I don’t think I’ll ever be eager to share everything I write again. I honestly think that’s for the better. I will continue to write one word at a time, I’ll write for the love of it, and, hopefully, one day I’ll share a few more things. When I’m ready.
-C @ Los Tokyo.
its a national holiday
Celebrating someone’s death seems like a really macabre thing to do. Like I get that people don’t like him because of how his administration dealt with the AIDS epidemic, but promoting someone’s death as a good thing doesn’t sit well with me.
during his administration, we had a problem with abuse of patients in mental healthcare facilities (asylums, but don’t call them that), and his response to it was just to shut down the entire system. he closed all public mental healthcare facilities because a few of them were mistreating patients, and all those mentally ill people suddenly found themselves homeless without the skills necessary to survive in the general populous. he’s the reason why our healthcare system is so terrible, and he’s to blame for the homelessness epidemic (i’ll get into the next reason why he’s responsible for our high homeless population in a sec). millions of people lost everything because of reagan. thousands died.
he also completely restructured our economy. from 1776 until he became president, we had an economic system like no other (look up the American School), but he removed most of the rules and regulations we had to keep the system in place because our system at the time limited accumulation of wealth. we had a built-in buffer that kept most people middle class. when he restructured our economy so he and his friends could get richer, reagan removed the safeguards that kept us out of poverty (most of the time), so now the lower echelons of society were in freefall towards homelessness. people lost their homes and businesses because the rich could do basically whatever they wanted now. superstores like wal-mart rose to prominence and pushed out small businesses because of this. our government also greatly reduced its expenditure on infrastructure. ronald reagan’s greed is why we don’t have enough trains and all our roads are falling apart.
he also expanded our already bloated military while in power. one of his slogans was “peace in strength.” his goal for our country was to get an iron grip around the rest of the world and impose our own agendas on other countries at gunpoint.
One of the first things reagan did when he came to power was to ignore the supreme court’s earlier ruling, ignore the constitution, and try to enforce a mandatory daily christian prayer time in all schools. when government workers went on strike against him and his policies, he fired 11,345 people. he put 11,345 people out of a job because they didn’t like him.
he lowered taxes for the rich, but increased taxes on the poor, contributing to the aforementioned lack of infrastructure and homelessness crisis. he also began privatising the government, which put thousands of jobs at risk and made wealthy capitalists the men who run our country. reagan is responsible for trickle down economics.
after the great depression, our government put in social programs to help people stay afloat, like universal healthcare for the elderly and disabled, basic income (the government paid people to dig ditches if they couldn’t find any other jobs. the ditches didn’t serve any purpose, but those people needed money and the government was willing to give money to anyone who worked), and food stamps. ronald reagan slashed all these programs and more, like the EPA, which made sure we were a “green” country.
as a result of these slashes, people who had been secure on government assistance programs were now having to take out loans and get into debt, which jeopardised our economy. we had a stock market crash because people were becoming too poor to buy stocks, and our national debt increased by 3 times. we went from $997 billion in debt to $2.85 trillion in 1987.
he also pushed us further into the cold war. previously, our relations with russia were cooling down a bit, but during reagan’s second term, he began actively threatening russia again. ronald reagan brought us to the brink of a nuclear war that would have killed all humans on earth.
Ronald Reagan and Maggie Thatcher, the most hated prime minister in UK history, were close friends. he was also personal friends with Donald Trump.
Under reagan, we resumed a history of violent military imperialism in foreign countries, most notably lebanon, afghanistan, and pakistan. In lebanon, we tried to stop a revolution against an oppressive regime, and in afghanistan and pakistan, reagan ordered the CIA to train civilians and create a military force to fight russia for us. Reagan created the taliban, a militant group that even today publicly dismembers people for playing games in public. they cut off children’s hands. He also began dealing weapons with China, betraying our longstanding ally, Taiwan, destabilising politics in the pacific. Under his orders, we secretly aided african and south american military dictatorships in crushing their opposition. He assisted Ayatollah Khomeini, the leader of Iran who started the 1979 revolution, in purging political opposition from the government. in 1988 our military shot down an iranian commercial flight, killing 290 civilians.
Reagan was a Nazi sympathiser and referred to slain SS officers as “victims” of the war. just to make sure you read that right: Ronald Reagan supported the Nazis.
He declared the war on drugs, a movement that has greatly increased the disproportionate incarceration rates of african american and latino men in this country.
During Reagan’s second term, 115,000 people were diagnosed with AIDS and 70,000 died of it. Reagan did nothing to curb the spread, despite knowing that the AIDS epidemic almost exclusively affected black people and the LGBT community. when he learned how many people were dying and who they were, he laughed. he laughed at our suffering while we were dropping dead.
In short, Ronald Reagan was a wealthy, selfish, greedy, capitalistic, imperialist, racist, ableist, homophobic, genocidal, antisemitic, warmongering, backstabbing murderer. Ronald Reagan was a monster.
Wow and this didn’t even cover the crack epidemic
It doesn’t cover the crack epidemic, or the various wars in South America, that resulted in the refugees immigrant crisis now.
Rest In Piss
In history, it is very rare that you can blame a single person for a huge calamity, because so many things play into them. It’s dangerous to try and simplify complex events down to the point where you can say, “This person is responsible for X”
Ronald Reagan is one of the exceptions.
How the internet dies.
Or how, exactly, platforms die.
Today, 28th of January 2023, is a special date.
It’s the 210th anniversary of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice getting published. So I’ll be rereading some of my favourite chapters.
When you’re feeling like your life is just a series of unrelated wacky adventures, take a breather and remember good memes, good shows, and that it gets easier! . . #memes #feels #oldinternet #enamelpins #cartoons #wojak #bojackhorseman #losangeles (at Los Angeles, California) https://www.instagram.com/p/ChaiIINPV-x/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=
Finds us on Etsy!
Shop Los Angeles + Tokyo = Los Tokyo! by LosTokyo located in LA, California. Rave reviews! Average review rating is 4.8 or higher
Open up this pit, yo! For proud nerds who knew about Kawakami and good cartoons before it was cool! 😎🤙🏽
Available for purchase on Instagram, LosTokyo.store, and Etsy.com/shop/lostokyo 🕶
Design by @Tac.gnol . . #crustpunk #punkrock #punkfashion #metalhead #disrocker #enamelpins #pindrop #noisenotmusic #ingrindwecrust #grimadventuresofbillyandmandy #irwin #cartoon #nostalgia #etsy #lostokyo https://www.instagram.com/p/ChaeTpYPzv8/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=
Find us on Etsy!
Shop Los Angeles + Tokyo = Los Tokyo! by LosTokyo located in LA, California. Rave reviews! Average review rating is 4.8 or higher
When you need some rock to go with your cottagecore, these industrious little crust punk gnomes can “ruff” it AND play nice!
#Bluey #cartoonart #cottagecore #gardengnome #enamelpins #crustpunk #pingame #pinstagram #metalhead #latfo #punkrock #upthepunx #grindcore #dbeat #pastelgoth #smallbusiness #lostokyo (at Downtown Los Angeles) https://www.instagram.com/p/ClhysLUrgnG/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=
Find us on Etsy!
Shop Los Angeles + Tokyo = Los Tokyo! by LosTokyo located in LA, California. Rave reviews! Average review rating is 4.8 or higher
These Kawaii Penguins have been all the rage since last week! Snap one up while supplies last! 😉📸
#Kawaii #penguin #enamelpins #pinstagram #pastelgoth #Otaku #animalart #smallbusiness #etsy #internetculture #cute #anime #photography #lostokyo https://www.instagram.com/p/Cg0CGJfvGrC/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=
Your amigo for transit!
New test pin came out nice!
Glad our supplier made it through the pandemic. :)
+
Limited supply of discounted pins, including our Vaporwave Sunglasses, available now online on our website now! Reduced from our regular price of $8.99 to $6.66 (36% off).
Art design courtesy of @LosTokyo.Store on Instagram.
Limited supply of discounted pins, including our Vaporwave Sunglasses, available now online on our website now! Reduced from our regular price of $8.99 to $6.66 (36% off).
Art design courtesy of @LosTokyo.Store on Instagram.
Backyard BBQ in the Big City
#Brooklyn #BigCity #newyorkcity #nyc #bbq #nostalgia #LosTokyo https://www.instagram.com/p/CeIXilpuYMK/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=
